LOS ANGELES, Jan 23 (Reuters) - "Wonder Woman" failed to
conquer Oscar voters on Tuesday despite riding to one of the
biggest box office hits of 2017 on a wave of female empowerment,
making it one of the biggest snubs for Hollywood's highest
honors.

The Warner Bros. movie, featuring Gal Gadot as the
sword-wielding Wonder Woman, was the first stand-alone female
superhero film since 2005 and earned some $825 million globally,
making its filmmaker Patty Jenkins, 46, the highest-grossing
female director in Hollywood.

But at Tuesday's Oscar nominations, Jenkins was left off the
director's race and the film was snubbed in the best picture
category, despite nods for other movies about women and made by
women.

Instead, it was Guillermo Del Toro's surreal fantasy romance
"The Shape of Water" that led the Oscar nominations with 13
nods.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have
traditionally disdained big action and superhero movies in favor
of smaller art-house fare, like last year's Oscar champion
"Moonlight" and this year's dark comedy "Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing, Missouri," which landed seven nods.

Since 1990, only the 2003 fantasy epic "Lord of the Rings;
The Return of the King" snapped that trend to win the top Oscar
honor. Sci-fi movie "Avatar," still the biggest box office movie
of all time, received a best picture nomination in 2010 but lost
out to "The Hurt Locker."

This year's surprises include four nominations in key
categories for Jordan Peele's "Get Out," in which an
African-American man finds himself trapped at his white
girlfriend's house with her strange family. The $5 million
horror movie from Universal Pictures became a box
office success with more than $250 million globally and became a
talking point for modern day race relations in America.

Veteran actor Christopher Plummer, 88, was also a surprise
contender in the supporting actor race for Sony Pictures'
Getty kidnapping film "All the Money in the World."
Plummer boarded the movie a month before its release, replacing
actor Kevin Spacey because of sexual misconduct allegations.

James Franco was excluded from the best actor race for "The
Disaster Artist" after facing accusations of sexual misconduct
earlier this month following his Golden Globe win.

Franco said the accusations were "not accurate." He lost out
on Sunday at the Screen Actors Guild awards to Gary Oldman for
"Darkest Hour."

"The Disaster Artist," a comedy about the worst Hollywood
film ever made, received early awards attention but on Tuesday,
only landed one Oscar nomination, for adapted screenplay.

Other snubs included Steven Spielberg in the directing race
for press freedom movie "The Post," and its star Tom Hanks.
"Mudbound" was left out of best picture and filmmaker Dee Rees
was also excluded from the directing race, but she landed a nod
for adapted screenplay.

German film "In The Fade," which won the Golden Globe for
best foreign language film and received praise for its lead star
Diane Kruger, was left out of the Oscar foreign language race.